Seismic imaging is a methodology of moving seismic events recorded on the surface to locations at which the events occurred in the subsurface, thereby creating a more accurate image of the subsurface. A high-quality seismic image is beneficial for reducing the oil and gas exploration risk and minimizing the number of drilled dry holes, which is especially true as petroleum exploration migrates towards the imaging of sub-salt reservoirs. A precondition for producing a high-quality seismic image (especially a depth image of complex geological structures such as faults, salt bodies, folding, etc.) from a seismic dataset is to have an accurate velocity model. Traditionally, the velocity model used by seismic imaging is developed from the seismic dataset itself, e.g., using seismic tomography, constrained by a limited amount of non-seismic data such as well log data and lab test results. As a result, the velocity model tends to be static one because it is built on top of only currently available information without leveraging information associated with the geological, geomechanical, or diagenetic history of rocks within a particular region.
Basin modeling (or petroleum system modeling) is a tool used for analyzing the formation and the evolution of a sedimentary basin, processing information from multiple geological disciplines, and creating visual models for characterizing, e.g., the burial history, thermal history, maturity history, as well as expulsion, migration and trapping of hydrocarbons within a region. From analyzing these models, people can make inferences about matters such as hydrocarbon generation and timing, maturity of potential source rocks and migration paths of expelled hydrocarbons. But so far, the basin modeling technique has found little use in improving the velocity model used for seismic imaging.